All about ski lifts, tramways and gondolas

Slide Brook Express – Sugarbush, VT

Slide Brook is the longest chairlift in the world at just over 11,000 feet. It connects two mountains and has a net vertical rise of less than 400′.Loading area on the Lincoln end.Tension station at Mt. Lincoln.This is approximately towers 30-40.Another view of the Mt. Lincoln section.The drive station at Mt. Ellen.Depression towers 1 and 2.Mt. Ellen station.View towards Lincoln Peak at tower 8.T4.Drive station seen from above.Doppelmayr Worldbook entry.

I wonder how any mountain runs lifts in the summer then if they have to have snow under it to evac. Couldn’t they use atv’s to get around if there wasn’t snow? Whiteface runs their gondola all summer and the line is really steep and hard to get to. IMO you can’t advertise it as one ski area if you have to take a bus between the sections.

In my opinion saying they need snow under the lift to do an evac is an excuse for not running it to save money. Would’ve edited this into my previous comment but there’s no way to edit or delete comments.

The problem with Slide Brook is that it spends 11000 feet in no-mand’s land. If there was developed terrain that is easily accessible via snowcat or ATV, then the “must have sufficient snow below the lift line for evacuations” rule probably doesn’t apply. I have never ridden White Face’s Gondola, but do you know if it has some kind of special evacuation system? Red Pine at Park City has Poma’s Poma-Bus evacuation system for this purpose (to my understanding). I’m not sure if the “must have sufficient snow below the lift line for evacuations” applies to Whiteface’s Gondola, or if it is just a rule unique to Sugarbush and the Slide Brook Express due to its remoteness.

Look up the lift on New England Ski History and you’ll see multiple pics dated 2004 showing the lift open with zero snow underneath on the south facing sections of the line. Clearly wasn’t an issue then, so unless some regulation changed, the reason they are telling you it doesn’t open and the actual reason it doesn’t open are different.

From Remontees-Mecaniques: “The Slide Brook Express is theoretically open seven days a week. However, it is the most often closed ski area device as there are many opening restrictions due to the length of the facility and the constraints to it. vertical evacuation. Thus, the device is not open in case of bad weather, or in case of too windy day and also too cold, or in case of low snow because the evacuation is provided only with snowy ground. Note that regardless of whether or not the connection is operational, shuttles connect both sides of the ski area.”

They’re just regurgitating what marketing/PR tells people. The whole snow requirement might be a more recent thing as there are multiple pictures on the internet of that lift running without snow underneath it. Even if all that stuff is true with the weather related restrictions, it doesn’t change the fact that Sugarbush is too cheap to run their own shuttle between the base areas and instead just refers you to the local public bus that only runs once every hour and makes dozens of stops between the base areas and takes well over half an hour to complete the trip. If you drive yourself over you’d lose your parking spot which could be a big deal if you got there early on a busy day. They just don’t think they need to run it or provide a good alternative because many people just ski one side or the other on a given day and don’t go between. I really want to get to Sugarbush, but I don’t plan on doing that unless this lift is open and connecting the two mountains.

There is a long list of requirements needed to be met in order for Sugarbush to run this lift. #1. There has to be 1′ 1/2 of snow both underneath the lift and on the access road to the bottom of Slide Brook Basin. #2. The temperature must be above 5 degrees throughout the whole entire day. #3. There can´t be high winds. #4. The access road to the bottom of Slide Brook Basin must be groomed. Sugarbush has to want to run it also.

So if you don’t know already, AlpineZone is a website with a ton of forums about northeast skiing. I started a thread about Sugarbush lift replacements and brought up Slide Brook. Most people said they hated it and it was useless. My question for them is why. I love to be able to split my day between two mountains without having to worry about a bus timetable and it taking 45 minutes because it stops multiple times on its trip between mountains. I think these “Slide Brook haters” are just upset at the world and the modern Sugarbush. I truly hope that Alterra sees the vision that ASC once had for this resort and runs Slide Brook more often. I have confirmation from Win that the “safety standards” are Sugarbush’s own policy meaning that it is possible for Alterra to run it more often than the current ownership. I will be so happy to be able to ski both mountains in one day almost every time I ski at Sugarbush.

They could make it a chondola and when the requirements don’t allow the lift to run, they could only load the gondolas. That way you could still ride the chair if you want to and the conditions allow it.

Honestly, they should just make it a full gondola. I’ve never ridden slide brook myself, but I’ve ridden Chair 10 at Telluride (300 feet shorter), and it’s really not fun. As a lift people would ride at most twice a day, I don’t see the problem making it a full gondola, because if it was a chondola, unless it was 50 degrees out, the chairs would go completely empty.

The whole reason it is a chair is to make it effortless to traverse between the mountains. It is a nice ride that is rather pleasant that actually isn’t too long. Sunshine might be different in that way. Slide Brook (when it actually runs) is amazing. I ski at Sugarbush very often and it is always a treat when it is running. Too bad it doesn’t run more often.

Sunshine at Telluride has a bunch of long double greens and blues that can be lapped from it, and real estate that can be skied in/out of, and being an alternate route to Prospect Bowl and Gold Hill (when combined with Ute Park), has much more necessity.

If you come in March you’ll find that it runs most days thanks to more favorable weather and snow conditions. And a decent amount of people use it (at least on weekends) so the ski area certainly likes to run it if they can.

I think the best solution for Slide Brook is to simply expand into Slide Brook Basin. Two lifts, one to the top of Mt. Ellen and one to the top of North Lynx, would be all that is required to allow for a skiable connection. There are also some well pitched slopes in the area that would allow Sugarbush to offer a mixture of more mellow intermediates and challenging diamonds.

Were having the same problem with operating john paul in the summer. JP has a very long and steep lift line and you cant really evacuate the lift in the summer because everyone is on foot. Not on skis or a snowboard. Slide brook is a mellow lift though. Cant they just rope you off and the patrol men take off your skis/board before you hit the ground? The big problem is getting everyone out after they get roped off. I imagine it would be a muddy mess trying to get out of there during bad snow years. If it were to happen on a bad snow year. Snowbasin gets plenty of snow so no problem in the winter.

Sugarbush is different than many other large mountains. They would never pave a road due to wildlife concerns and for the fact that the Slide Brook basin is supposed to be an untouched backcountry ski area. I ski at Sugarbush almost every weekend during the winter and I know for a fact that they would never spend that much money on a road for a lift that is clearly not a top priority for Sugarbush. Slide Brook is an extremely useful lift (when it runs), although Sugarbush treats Mt. Ellen as a secondary mountain that doesn’t need to be connected with Lincoln Peak. In my opinion, both mountains should be connected at all time as “Sugarbush”, not Lincoln Peak and Mt. Ellen as two separate areas, although this can’t happen due to the ridiculous operational constraints on Slide Brook.